Lindsay Hoyle
Main Page: Lindsay Hoyle (Speaker - Chorley)Department Debates - View all Lindsay Hoyle's debates with the Department for Education
(1 year, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberI know that the rate of interest on student loans is a matter of great interest to my right hon. Friend and his constituents. The switch from maintenance grants to loans that are effectively contingent upon income has been a success, in that we have seen during this period a significant increase in the likelihood of 18-year-olds from disadvantaged backgrounds going into higher education, but of course we constantly keep these things under review.
I have been speaking to a lot of students in recent weeks and they are obviously anxious about the cost of living. While student maintenance loans have increased by just 2.3% on average, inflation has rocketed to more than 10%, accommodation costs are up 5%, food costs are up 14.5% and transport costs are up by 10.6%, hitting commuter students particularly hard. The result is that students are facing an average funding gap of £439 per month and dropping out, while the Government are facing a credibility gap in this sector. Can the Secretary of State tell us what students are supposed to do?
As I outlined previously, £261 million is available in this academic year to support disadvantaged students who need additional help. We have been working closely with the Office for Students to make sure that universities support those who are in hardship. It is worth pointing out that students will also benefit from reductions to their energy costs if they are buying from a domestic supplier, through the energy cost support package that we are putting in place. We have, as the hon. Gentleman said, continued to increase support for living costs over the last few years. He will know, however, that we keep these things under review constantly and an announcement on the uplift for this year will be forthcoming shortly.
My hon. Friend will understand only too well, as a former resident of Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke, that, like Cornwall, it too is a place of outstanding beauty. This Government are committed to ensuring that affordable housing is delivered, and since 2010 more than 9,000 homes have been delivered in Cornwall. In August 2021 we announced £1 billion of funding from our affordable homes programme, which will be used to deliver more than 17,000 affordable homes across the south-west. I am pleased to say that Cornwall is also an education investment area and has 26 schools that are eligible for the levelling up premium, including Liskeard School and Community College in my hon. Friend’s constituency, and specialist teachers in certain subjects in those schools can claim up to £3,000 tax free annually. Finally, in March 2022—
Disadvantage knows no boundaries and, likewise, we have huge challenges in our schools in Hackney. The Government promised that the starting salary for teachers would be £30,000. How close are the Government to reaching that manifesto commitment?
I am delighted to tell the hon. Lady that, at the next independent pay review, I have asked for this Government’s manifesto commitment to a £30,000 a year starting salary to be honoured for 2023-24.
I thank the hon. Lady for her important question. I am proud of the Government’s record of investing in green jobs through T-levels, apprenticeships, higher technical qualifications and boot camps. Never before have there been so many opportunities to engage with green industries. We are also working closely with these industries to make sure they are at the heart of what we do.
The most popular high-quality vocational qualifications currently offered at level 3 are BTECs. Last week, the Education Committee heard evidence about the 6,500 level 3 students and 7,500 level 2 students whose results were delayed this year. The right hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) rightly criticised the failure to reveal the number of students affected at the time and all the uncertainty that caused. When did the Minister first know how many students had not received their results? Why did she not insist that the number be made public?
As the hon. Gentleman knows, I am a strong proponent of BTECs, having been a BTEC girl myself. The Department informed us, and we acted on that straightaway. I will have to get back to him with the exact date. Looking at the whole landscape, I assure him that it has been simplified and that, most importantly, these courses lead to good outcomes for students, ensuring they have a bright future.
I am pleased to say that the right hon. Lady is right and a number of minority groups now outperform the average, not least the largest group of the black community, those who would identify themselves as black African, who outperform the average in a number of ways. She is right, however, that there is underperformance by a number of black Caribbean pupils, mainly boys, and I certainly undertake to her to try to investigate why. However, I am sure she would agree that although external factors such as disadvantage can influence educational outcomes, the standard of the school and of the teaching that those pupils receive can often overcome many of those barriers. If she has not already done so, I urge her to visit the Michaela Community School in Wembley, which I visited two weeks ago and which is seeing extraordinary results from a very mixed and diverse community, in a very challenged part of London.
One key reason for underachievement—of all pupils, including pupils from different ethnic minorities—is the absence of children from school. At the start of term this September, there was just 93.5% attendance in all schools, which means that children lost up to an estimated 17.6 million hours of learning. At the start of school term, we would expect to see higher rates of attendance, of about 98%. I know that the Department has appointed 13 attendance advisers, but we have 1.7 million absent children and 100,000-plus so-called “ghost children”. What is my right hon. Friend doing to get those children back into school, so that the 1.7 million persistently absent children are safely returned to the classroom?
The Chairman of the Select Committee is absolutely right to push hard on this issue because it is vital to the future of not only those children, but their families. He is right that following the pandemic we have seen a reduction in attendance. One silver lining coming out of the pandemic was the fact that we now have real-time attendance data for a majority of schools—we are working to complete that for all—which allows us to focus in our efforts on driving attendance in those schools. Given my previous job at the Home Office, I am particularly keen that police, schools and local education authorities should work closely together to make sure that those children who are not at school and are not findable at home are found somewhere out in the community and brought back.
You are meant to work through the Chair, Secretary of State. If you could do so, it would be very helpful, because at least then I could hear you as well.
But of course £1.9 million is not even going to touch the scale of the problem that we have here. Recent research from PwC found that for every pound invested in free school meals there was a return of £1.71 in savings to the state. Given that many families have moved beyond “just about managing” into “just about surviving”, when will this Government match the Scottish Government’s commitment to universal free school meals for primary children and the transformational Scottish child payment?
Order. Let me just say that we want better taste in the House. The Minister is no longer on the Back Benches, so his rhetoric needs to be that of a Minister. I know he has that standing and capability. Come on, Minister!
Mr Speaker, I am making the point very clearly. The hon. Gentleman has an opportunity to stand at the Dispatch Box and talk up the teaching professions, talk up our schools, and talk up our reforms since 2010-11, which have seen the attainment gap narrowed—that was until, of course, the global pandemic, which has affected every single sector of our economy. Sadly, things have not gone in a way that we would have liked, but we are putting in the effort through the national tutoring programme, the £1.3 billion recovery premium, and the £650 million catch-up premium. That is an awful lot of money going into the system. We are also making sure that teachers are of a high quality, and, most importantly, that they have high-quality mentoring, an initial teaching training round and an early career framework, which give them the support that they need.
I was at a reception for our Love Our Colleges campaign. I am a true advocate on this matter and one thing I am passionate about is the parity of esteem between vocational and technical qualifications and academic qualifications. I ask Members please to put their trust in us as a Government, because we are fully behind all sectors and we are continuing a dialogue between colleges, schools and universities. As I have said, there have never been more options open to young people, and I am completely proud of our record in government.
As I mentioned, we are investing £2.6 billion over the next three years in new spaces for SEND and alternative provision. We have also implemented £1.4 billion in high-needs provision capital allocations for local authorities, and £9.1 billion—an increase of 13%—in high-needs funding. The hon. Lady will know that we launched the Green Paper on SEND and AP back in March. We are currently looking at the responses and we hope to respond by the end of the year.
I welcome the Minister to her place. She inherits the Government’s SEND review, which has caused widespread concern among parents of children with SEND that the Government are seeking simply to reduce expenditure and erode the rights of parents and children to access the support they need. As the Chancellor trawls for departmental cuts to pay for the Government’s reckless economic experiment, can the Minister confirm that the SEND review will not be used as an excuse to erode further the resources that children with special educational needs and disabilities rely on?
There have been four Secretaries of State for Education in the last year, and nine out of 10 schools in England say that they will run out of money this year. The dogs in the street know that the Government are so unstable as to be unfit for purpose. Does today’s Secretary of State for Education agree with me and the hon. Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) that the new Prime Minister will face an “ungovernable” and “riven” Tory party and that a general election is the only answer, otherwise things will go from very bad to much worse?
What does that have to do with education? I do not think it has anything to do with education, so let us go to Elliot Colburn.
I begin by welcoming the fourth Education Secretary in the last four months to his place. For the time being, he has the best job in Government. In May, internal Department documents described some school buildings as a “risk to life”. After the Conservatives crashed our economy, does he believe that there should be further cuts to school capital budgets?
I do sympathise with Brackenfield School’s predicament. Supporting children and young people with SEND to live fulfilling lives is of paramount importance. The local authority is responsible for deciding on the age range at a maintained school, but I share my hon. Friend’s concerns, and I will investigate what is going on.
The head of the Russell Group has said that the window for the UK to associate to Horizon Europe is “closing fast” and that
“failure to move forward with UK association would be bad news for research.”
What assurance can the Secretary of State give researchers that funding is imminent and that research will be protected at all costs?
I thank my right hon. Friend for his question, and I also thank his college. Colleges and sixth forms have been doing amazing work in rolling out T-levels. It is amazing, and I will just give an example before I go on to his question—
Topicals—all right. On results day, I visited a local college, and it was amazing—I wish I could bottle that enthusiasm—but my right hon. Friend is right that the key is working with local businesses and industries, which is why the whole programme was designed with them in mind.
On Friday, I received an email from the acting headteacher of Reay Primary School in my constituency. She said that
“many of our children are hungry. Our cook is providing as much as she can but the children want more. This tells me that the children must be missing out on food at home. We are going to provide bread”
but the school needs more money.
I have listened to the Secretary of State answer many questions about the cost of living crisis that parents face, but parents and teachers cannot wait. What more can he do to address this now?
Order. Can I say to the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Florence Eshalomi) that this is topicals and other people want to get in? We are going to go over the time now. We have got to help each other.
The hon. Lady will understand—she is a fantastic champion for her constituents—that the current global economic state is very serious. Inflation is not unique to this country. For example, it is at 17% in Holland and 10.9% in Germany. We are very aware of the pressures on households, which is why the £4 billion front-loading in the spending review has been so important, with the additional funding for the national tutoring programme, the recovery premium and the catch-up premium, the £2.5 billion for the pupil premium and the free school meals programme.